This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and John welcome Soheil Koushan, a member of the Technical Staff at Anthropic. During the conversation, Soheil discusses his journey from self-driving technology to his current work at Anthropic, focusing on AI safety and cloud capabilities. The conversation also explores the allure of machine learning, the challenges of ensuring AI safety, and the dynamic between research and product development. The group emphasizes the importance of responsible AI development and the complexities of defining safety across different cultures while also highlighting the transformative potential of AI and the need for ongoing dialogue about its implications, and so much more.
Highlights from this week’s conversation include:
Soheil’s Background and Journey in AI (0:40)
Anthropic's Philosophy on Safety (1:21)
Key Moments in AI Discovery (2:52)
Computer Vision Applications (4:42)
Magic vs. Reality in AI (7:35)
Product Development at Anthropic (12:57)
Tension Between Research and Product (14:36)
Safety as a Capability (17:33)
Community Notes and Democracy in AI (20:41)
Expert Panels for Safety (21:38)
Post-Training Data Quality (23:32)
User Data and Privacy (25:32)
Test Time Compute Paradigm (30:54)
The Future of AI Interfaces (36:04)
Advancements in Computer Vision (38:46)
The Role of AGI in AI Development (41:52)
Final Thoughts and Takeaways (43:07)
The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.
RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.
208: The Intersection of AI Safety and Innovation: Insights from Soheil Koushan on LLMs, Vision, and Responsible AI Development